What a Bioartist Taught Me About Life, Technology, and Being Human

Reflections on the Space Between Certainty and Wonder

I've been sitting with this conversation for a while now, letting it percolate through my engineer's mind and, more importantly, my heart. When I started the Idea Sandbox podcast, I was searching for voices that could challenge our comfortable assumptions about the world. Finding Oron Catts, a Bioartist who works with living tissue as his medium, felt like stumbling upon a rare gem in an unexpected place. Here was someone forcing us to question things I'd taken for granted – like what it means for something to be alive or whether technological solutions are always as clean and straightforward as we imagine them to be.

I'll admit – the conversation pushed me way outside my comfort zone, exactly what I hoped for when I dreamed up this podcast. As an engineer, I used to think lab-grown meat was a straightforward answer to our ethical and environmental challenges. But Oron's work revealed the complex dance between living and semi-living, the nuanced trade-offs we often overlook in our rush toward technological utopia. Through art, he opened my eyes to questions I hadn't thought to ask.

Symbiotica - a biological art research centre

The Living and the Semi-Living

The conversation with Oron cracked open something in me I didn't expect. We tend to think of life in familiar terms - a beating heart, moving limbs, breath, and consciousness. It's what I see when I look into my cat's eyes each morning, that unmistakable spark of being that makes me pause and wonder about the depth of our connection. But Oron's work pushed me to look deeper, to question where life begins and ends. When he spoke about cells surviving outside a body for a week, still metabolizing and responding to their environment, it shattered my comfortable assumptions about the boundaries between living and non-living.

These questions have followed me into the quiet moments of my days, transforming from abstract thoughts into deeply personal revelations. Since my earlier conversation with Varnika Singh about animal rights, I've found myself lingering in these spaces between certainty - watching how my cat meets my gaze as an equal, feeling the weight of that recognition. And now Oron's work adds another layer of complexity: what if life extends further down in ways we've been too quick to dismiss? What if our technological solutions, like lab-grown meat, aren't lifting the moral burden from our shoulders but instead asking us to expand our circle of consideration even wider?

Watching Oron speak about his work, I was struck by something more profound than his ideas—his humanity. Here was someone at the height of his field, directing institutes and creating groundbreaking art, yet willing to spend an hour with a curious engineer patiently unraveling complex ideas about life and technology. His eyes would light up when he discussed the importance of "useless" research, and his voice carried both passion and a hint of lament about our culture's obsession with immediate utility.

As he spoke, I thought about the book I'd recently read, "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective." It felt like pieces clicking into place - here was Oron, using art to probe uncomfortable questions about life. At the same time, this book argued that humanity's most outstanding achievements often come not from direct pursuit but from allowing ourselves to explore, wander, and question. Through his work, Oron isn't just challenging our assumptions about what constitutes life; he's demonstrating the vital importance of making space for questions that might seem impractical at first glance.

What moves me most is how he's managed to create a form of art that does more than provoke - it awakens. In a world increasingly driven by AI and technological solutions (which, don't get me wrong, I'm excited about), Oron reminds us to pause and consider the more profound implications of our innovations. Perhaps these new tools could help us better explore his nuanced questions, moving beyond simple human-centric solutions like "we need to grow more meat" to understanding the complex web of life we're part of.

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The Value of Useless Knowledge and Gray Beards

Something has been gnawing at me lately, a pattern I witnessed during my years in corporate engineering that echoes what Oron said about "useless knowledge." I watched a subtle but significant shift in a Fortune 500 automotive company with nearly a century of innovation. The "gray beards"—our veteran engineers who carried decades of hard-won wisdom—began disappearing from the corridors. Not through retirement but through a gradual devaluation of what they represented: knowledge for knowledge's sake.

These weren't just mentors with memorized product specs; they were living libraries of lessons learned through trial and error and ventures down paths that didn't always lead where expected but taught us something valuable. Their value wasn't in direct contribution to the next quarter's profits but in how they shaped our thinking, tempered our assumptions, and occasionally saved us from repeating history's mistakes. When a young engineer brought them a problem, they didn't just offer solutions - they shared stories, context, and deep understanding that only come from years of watching ideas succeed and fail.

Reflecting on Oron's work, I reflect on how this mirrors a larger societal pattern. We've become almost reflexively hostile to knowledge that doesn't have an immediate, measurable payoff. Yet history teaches us that real innovation - the kind that transforms industries and societies - often emerges from what might look like "useless" exploration. That old American saying, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," takes on new meaning here. Suppose we only venture down paths with clear objectives. In that case, we miss the magical moments of discovery that come from allowing ourselves to wander without agenda, from being open to wherever curiosity might lead us.

As we enter the AI age, I wonder if we're at risk of amplifying this mistake or if we have a unique opportunity to correct it. Could AI handle routine tasks, freeing us to pursue the kind of deep, exploratory thinking that Oron advocates? Could it help us preserve and build upon the wisdom that used to reside in our gray beards? These aren't just abstract questions—they're about the future we want to develop and whether we'll learn from the past as we race.

History keeps trying to teach us something if we'd only listen. Mark Twain's words echo: "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." I think about this often, especially when I remember the ten-year-old girl who worked in our home in India. The narrative we told ourselves seemed reasonable then - we provided shelter, food, and opportunity. But something in my gut knew better, even then, even without access to philosophical texts or moral frameworks. The discomfort I felt watching her work while I went to school wasn't just childhood empathy; it was an early recognition that accepted wisdom isn't always wise.

This is what makes Oron's work so powerful to me. Through his art, he's asking us to examine those comfortable narratives we tell ourselves today - about technological progress, our relationship with life, and the solutions we're racing to embrace. Just as my childhood self could sense the more profound moral questions about child labor without having the vocabulary to express them, perhaps our collective conscience is trying to tell us something about our rush toward technological utopia.

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We've been remarkably poor stewards of this planet—our oceans are choked with plastic, our rivers polluted, and our fellow species pushed to the brink. This is not because we're inherently destructive but because we too often act without fully considering the consequences. I'm not standing on any moral high ground here—I'm a tech enthusiast, excited by the possibilities of innovation. But Oron's work reminds me that we can be enthusiastic about progress and thoughtful about its implications.

Oron didn't set out to deliver this specific message, but his art has become a mirror for me. It shows us what happens when we pause long enough to examine our actions, question our assumptions, and consider the ripple effects of our choices. That could be the real gift of his work—not just the provocative questions about what constitutes life but the reminder that asking questions is a form of stewardship.

The conversation may not solve our immediate global crises (ha!), but it's shifted something in me. It reminds me that between blind consumption and total rejection of progress, there's a middle path where art, science, and human wisdom can work together to help us navigate the complex future ahead. And that's precisely where we need to be: not in a technological utopia but a more thoughtful, conscious, fully human world.

Love Always,

The Curious Nobody